1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate to graphics (e.g., 3 dimensional (3D) graphics) processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In related art 3D graphics applications, various blends of textures and/or colors may be used to obtain more natural and/or smooth images in real-time rendered scenes. A variety of cache memories may be used to improve the performance of related art 3D graphics pipelines during rendering. For example, a texture cache memory may be used for texture filtering, a color cache memory may be used for alpha blending, and a z/stencil or depth/stencil cache memory may be used for a z and/or a stencil test.
Cache memories may be used to decrease the likelihood (e.g., prevent) stall within the 3D graphics pipeline due to increased latency resulting from, for example, accessing external memory devices from a 3D graphics pipeline. However, this may affect the performance of the 3D graphics pipeline.
A 3D graphics pipeline may render a scene based on triangles, and units of spans in each triangle. When reading data (e.g., texture data, color data and/or z-data) for a span currently being rendered and/or processed, from an external memory device, the 3D graphics pipeline may read the address (e.g., coordinate) of the data and the corresponding data in advance. The address and data may be stored in a cache memory. When the 3D graphics pipeline renders the scene, a cache memory miss probability ratio increases with a change in span.
If a cache memory miss occurs each time the span in a triangle changes, the latency of the 3D graphics pipeline may increase. This may cause the 3D graphics pipeline to stall.